SENATE President Francis Escudero yesterday said the Senate cannot convene as an impeachment court after the Supreme Court ruled the Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte as null and void.
Escudero, in a press conference, said he was expressing a personal opinion.
During the plenary session, Escudero said the Senate will tackle during the session on August 6 what will happen to the impeachment court.
“For the record it was agreed on caucus that the matter will be decided upon by the Senate on August 6, when we open session on that date in order to afford ample and sufficient time to the members to study the 97-page Supreme Court decision, excluding the differing and concurring separate opinions filed by five or six additional magistrates on the Supreme Court,” he said.
In the press conference, Escudero said the members of the Senate will have to decide on what they will do next with regard to the impeachment court.
“We are a collective body and we will be deciding upon this matter collectively also after deliberations and via a vote,” he said.
He said the senators will discuss what will happen to the SC decision since there was a precedent that the upper chamber, as an impeachment court, voted to decide on the high court ruling in the impeachment trial of former Chief Justice Renato Corona involving his foreign currency deposits. He recalled that the impeachment court the voted 13-10 to abide by the SC decision.
He said that will be the most likely scenario when they tackle the SC decision on August 6.
“That will most likely happen. There will be someone who will move, for example, to act on the SC decision or what will do next. Someone will reply and make a motion also. If no one objects, that’s it. If someone objects, then we will put it to a vote,” he said in Filipino during the briefing.
He said the SC decision means the Senate does not have jurisdiction over the impeachment complaint because the one-year bar rule has been violated by the House of Representatives.
He said the SC has also declared it decision as “immediately executory,” thus it must be followed.
“Personally, my position as a lawyer is this: the Supreme Court has decided — whether you are favor or against it — so this must be followed. Otherwise, we will have a constitutional crisis and other nations might see us as a banana republic where we only follow what we like,” he said in Filipino.
He said there are talks among his colleagues on the application of the principle of “operative fact” which the SC itself decided as an exception to the null and void ab initio ruling, but expressed doubt it can be applied to this case since the high court should have applied that principle when the petition was filed.
